Time has run out for the regime in Venezuela.

I am fully aware that we are living through complex and critical days, not only for my country but also for the entire region. However, the capture of Nicolás Maduro has renewed hope and strengthened my conviction that we must remain firm in our cause, with the certainty that the valid reward will be to see Venezuela free from those who continue to cling illegitimately to power.

In light of this new reality, I adopt a clear, direct, and unequivocal position:

I demand the immediate release of all political prisoners.

I demand that all persons arbitrarily detained for political reasons be returned to their families immediately, without delay or conditions.

According to Foro Penal, as of Jan. 5, 2026, there are 806 political prisoners in Venezuela, including 105 women, 175 military personnel, and one adolescent, and a total of 18,623 arbitrary arrests documented since 2014. The same report documents 17 people who have died while in State custody and 875 civilians prosecuted before military courts, clearly evidencing the use of the judicial and security apparatus as instruments of political persecution. In parallel, the humanitarian system estimates that 7.9 million people in Venezuela require urgent assistance, further aggravating the impact of repression on daily life.

Behind these figures are shattered lives, separated families, and destroyed life projects. Students, activists, human rights defenders, political leaders, and members of the armed forces remain imprisoned without judicial guarantees, without due process, and without justice.

Since the capture of Nicolás Maduro, repression has not ceased. On the contrary, more than ten journalists have been arbitrarily detained, while others have been harassed, imprisoned, or mistreated for carrying out their duty to inform. Today, journalism in Venezuela has become a heroic and high-risk act.

This situation is further aggravated by a new attack on fundamental freedoms: an illegitimate decree of “external state of emergency”, whose purpose is to legalize state terrorism, expand the scope of repression, and deepen the criminalization of dissent and freedom of expression.

The destruction of freedoms cannot and must not be normalized, either by society or by the international community.

I do not forget the atrocities committed against people deprived of their liberty: systematic violations of due process, torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, denial of medical care, and prolonged isolation.

These practices have been widely documented and denounced and are currently under investigation by international justice mechanisms.

In this regard, the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela has repeatedly expressed grave concern over the persistence of serious human rights violations, including the use of torture, enforced isolation, and the responsibility of State security forces in systematic abuses, as reflected in its statements and reports issued on Jan. 3, 2026, and throughout 2025.

From my unwavering commitment to human rights, I issue a firm and urgent call to Venezuelan citizens and to all people in the free and democratic world to stand together in defense of human dignity.

All political prisoners must be released now.

All torture and detention centers must be closed.

I am convinced that there can be no genuine democratic transition without the immediate release of political prisoners, the submission to justice of those responsible for arbitrary detentions, and the establishment of accountability mechanisms, guarantees of non-repetition, and full reparation for victims and their families. This is the only viable path toward a proper transition to democracy in Venezuela.

Today, more than ever, I stand in solidarity, inside and outside Venezuela, with the victims and their families.

This is a moment of definition, not of silence or hesitation.

I assume, together with millions of Venezuelans, that we are co-responsible for our collective reality and for the new Venezuela that we are called to rebuild.

Dignity, freedom, and justice cannot wait.

Freedom for Venezuela.

Juan Carlos Viloria Doria is president of the Global Alliance for Human Rights and vice president of Venezolanos en Barranquilla, an NGO based in Barranquilla, Colombia.

We have a clearly deranged, sick, felon as president, who can’t even remember if he had an MRI, or a CT. He says he takes enough aspirin to keep his blood running thin in his veins. He fakes health reports, and lies every time he opens his mouth. His brain appears foggier than Joe Biden’s ever was.

The felon arranged to get a fake Peace Prize from the soccer federation, while taking military actions around the world. He sanctioned American attacks on Nigeria, Iran, Syria, and now on the government, and people, of Venezuela. He has our military attacking boats, claiming they are carrying drugs, with no proof. He interferes in foreign elections, making the United States less safe. He obviously supports Putin in his war against Ukraine, and supports Netanyahu’s destruction of Gaza, and his starvation of the Palestinian people there. Because of all this it’s understandable why he calls his Secretary of Defense, his Secretary of War. That individual being unqualified with no competence, or decency — the perfect toady for the fascists surrounding Trump. He has a Secretary of State in Marco Rubio who clearly has no principles at all. Rubio previously said, “Donald Trump – a con artist – will never get control of this party…We cannot allow a con artist to get access to the nuclear codes of the United States of America.” He compared Trump to a “third-world strong man.” Now as Secretary of State he justifies all the illegal actions the felon takes.

I, and many others, question “Where is Congress in all this?” Do no Republicans in Congress have any cojones? Two Republican woman have criticized Trump — Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.). Both on the Epstein files, one on screwing the American people with regard to their health insurance. Both are now out of Congress, still MAGA, but found if you disagree with the felon, he sics his cult on you. 

My other question is: When will any in the media really stand up to him? When do mainstream media call out every one of his lies, as he makes them? When do they show any guts, and repeat each day he is deranged? When do they have daily headlines, calling him out on things from his health reports, to lies about the economy? Where are the daily headlines calling out the Republican Congress for its lack of action? Why is there no representative clock on every TV network, ticking off the time Congress doesn’t take back their rightful place as an equal branch of government? When will they call out the Supreme Court, reminding people what Trump’s picks said during their confirmations, versus what they are doing now? When will they actually reclaim ‘The freedom of the press?’ 

Democrats must continue to speak out. I am aware they have little power in this Congress, but they must not remain silent. We have seen, when they do speak up, we win elections. They help the people to wake up, as they did in recent elections in New Jersey and Virginia. In races as distinct as the mayoralty of Miami, where a Democrat won for the first time in 30 years, and did so in a landslide; and Democrats won two special elections for State Senate in Mississippi. In Georgia, Democrats won two seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, the first time in 20 years they won a statewide seat. And they won a State Senate seat in Iowa, and the redistricting vote in California. 

To continue winning Democrats must remind people every day what the felon, and his fascist cohorts, are doing to destroy their lives. Latinos and Hispanics need a daily reminder, it is the felon who once said he supports them, whose government is now deporting them. Young people must be reminded every day, the felon is destroying the country they will inherit, their future, by denying climate change. Everyone needs daily reminders how he is destroying the health of the country. Ending research grants looking for cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and HIV/AIDS. Ending research grants into curing childhood diseases, development of mRNA vaccines, and other potential progress to protect Americans, and the world, when the next pandemic occurs, and it will. He is literally killing children by having his government speak out against vaccinations for illnesses like measles, considered eradicated before he came into office. 

All of this needs to be headlined each day in our newspapers, and on TV, by the people who still can, and are willing, to do it. Those not bought off by, or afraid of, the felon, and his fascist cohorts. Those who don’t sit with him at Mar-a-Lago, and have become his enablers. We the people need to take to the streets and every time there is an election, use our vote to say to the sick, deranged, felon, and his fascist cohorts, ‘NO MORE’. 

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

Jan. 6 taught us what it costs to defend our families and our communities.

Five years ago, Michael Fanone went to work as a Metropolitan Police Department officer and ended the day fighting for his life while defending the United States Capitol.

After Michael spoke publicly about what he witnessed on Jan. 6, the response was not disagreement or debate. It was intimidation. His mother was swatted in a targeted attack. 

We are not immediate family, but we spend holidays together. Our lives overlap. And that was close enough.

Unpaid pizza deliveries were sent to our homes. Strangers showed up demanding payment. Threats followed, by phone and online. The message was unmistakable: Speaking out against Donald Trump would come at a cost, not only for you, but for your family. 

As Mayor Muriel Bowser said at the time, Jan. 6 was “textbook terrorism.” 

What made this harder was not only the intimidation itself, but the absence of any clear support once the headlines faded. One of us was a Metropolitan Police officer. The other served on the D.C. State Board of Education. If anyone should have known where to turn or had access to guidance or protection, it should have been us. Instead, there were no clear resources to help families deal with harassment, no guidance on what to do when threats followed us home, and no sense that anyone had our backs once the attention moved on. We were left to absorb it quietly and figure it out ourselves.

That experience changed how I understood Jan. 6, not as a single violent day, but as the start of a longer effort to make civic engagement feel dangerous and isolating. You do not have to silence everyone. You only have to make examples of a few.

I know many people in this city recognize that feeling now. The sense that speaking out carries risk. That you cannot afford to lose your job. That scrubbing your social media is safer than risking the consequences. In this context, silence is not necessarily apathy. It is self-preservation.

As a school board member and healthcare navigator, I hear it from families who decide to keep their children at home rather than send them to school. I hear it from families who decide not to re-certify their Medicaid, not because they are ineligible, but because they fear being targeted for using public benefits. These are not abstract concerns. They are everyday decisions shaped by fear of retaliation, fear learned by watching what happens to people who speak out.

More people in our city are now asking the same question my family was forced to confront on Jan. 6: Who will back you when the pressure does not stop, or when it follows you home after work?

This is where the city should step in and say clearly: We will have your back.

Yes, D.C. operates under real constraints. We lack statehood. We cannot deploy the National Guard without federal approval. Congress can overturn our laws.

But even within those limits, choices still matter. Across D.C., neighbors are walking children to school when families fear being targeted by ICE. Passersby are stopping to question why someone is being profiled or detained. These acts do not eliminate risk. They redistribute it, often making the difference between retreat and resistance.

This is not about asking everyone to be louder or braver on their own. It is about whether we are willing, as a city and a community, to make it safer for people to stand up to a bully. That means building real support around those who take risks, so they are not left isolated afterward. It means treating endurance as a shared responsibility, not an individual test.

Our city may not have all the powers it would have as a state, but we still have choices. Right now, residents and city workers who face threats are left to navigate a maze of agencies, hotlines, and informal advice on their own. That gap is a policy choice, and it does not have to remain one. There should be one clear place to go when harassment or threats occur, a single point of contact that helps document what’s happening, connects people to existing resources, and coordinates a response across agencies. Not a new bureaucracy, but a clear front door. The message it would send matters as much as the help itself. You are not on your own, and the city is paying attention beyond the news cycle.

Jan. 6 did not end at the Capitol. It moved into our neighborhoods, our families, and our daily choices. The work now is not to demand a single expression of courage, but to make it safer for all of us to stand up in our own way, together.

Allister Chang is a member of the D.C. State Board Of Education from Ward 2.